This Week in the News…

Posted: December 3, 1999 at 1:00 am, Last Updated: November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

Following are highlights of national news coverage George Mason received during the past week:

Friday, Nov. 26, Deseret News

“Smart” Air Bags Are Dumb Idea

By Susan Dudley, senior research fellow, and Wendy Gramm, director of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Va.

“Responding to public alarm over news that deployment of air bags has killed, rather than protected, some children, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a new regulation requiring ‘smarter’ air bags. A review of the history of NHTSA’s regulation of seat belts suggests that the regulators, not the air bags, need to be smarter…. Unfortunately, regardless of how sophisticated NHTSA makes its tests or how sophisticated manufacturers make air bags, this one-size-fits-all approach will not meet the preferences or–more important–protect the safety of all consumers under all conditions.”

“Greenpeace and other groups of true believers assert that the WTO weakens domestic and international environmental regulation and that rapacious global markets prevent sustainable development. They fail to realize that the prosperity that comes from free trade is the key to environmental quality…. As environmental activists descend upon Seattle for their ‘Global Peoples’ Protest by the Puget,’ their voices should not drown out the chorus of free trade.”

Sunday, Nov. 28, Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ)

College Enrollment Scale Tips Away from Men

“At a time when women are making tremendous gains in higher education, finding more support, and earning more advanced diplomas than ever, a troubling phenomenon is occurring on college campuses across the country: The men are vanishing…. Locally, many campuses reflect the trends highlighted by [Iowa-based policy analyst Thomas] Mortenson. At George Mason University in Fairfax County, Va., and George Washington University in Washington, 55 percent of the undergraduates are women.”

Sunday, Nov. 28, New York Times

Cold War without End

“The thrust of most of the new work [in the field of Communist studies] might be called counterrevisionist…. Arthur Herman, a historian at George Mason University, may be taking this counterrevisionism as far as anyone: In his new book, to be published this week by the Free Press, he sets out to rehabilitate Senator Joseph McCarthy. Herman writes in Joseph McCarthy: Re-examining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator that McCarthy ‘proved more right than wrong in terms of the larger picture’ of Communists in the State Department. Herman acknowledges that McCarthy would exaggerate and sometimes lie when cornered, but concludes that he was not the ogre he was made out to be.”

Wednesday, Dec. 1, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Medical Error Remedy Similar to Coyne Plan Killed in 1993

“A member of the Institute of Medicine committee that produced this week’s report, Mary Wakefield of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., said that committee members wrestled with the reporting issue but decided that ‘health care providers should be accountable’ for their most serious errors. The study says reporting should be encouraged and the emphasis should be on preventing future errors. But when serious harm is done, Wakefield said, ‘the public would have a right to that information.'”

“‘I don’t think the government in Madrid has come to the conclusion that it needs to negotiate with the Basques,’ suggests Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. ‘They still think they can win…. It is very, very hard to stamp this sort of thing out altogether. If the Spanish government thinks it can beat ETA just by using the police, they are deluding themselves.'”